Maybe I'm just cynical, but this "elite counterterrorism force" sounds to me like a security organization whose primary purpose has more to do with bolstering Maliki vis-à-vis internal enemies than with counterterrorism as such. Not that I blame him, all kinds of other factions have their own armed wings and no loyalty to Maliki or the Iraqi state, so to stay in office he'll need friends with guns of his own.

That's a coincidence, isn't it? That's pretty much what it sounded like to me too. And who knows? Maybe these Interior officials really were trying to reconstitute the Baath Party. Seems pretty stupid to me, but stranger things have happened. The big question is, does "Baath Party" in this context really mean "Baath Party," or does it just mean "Sunni guys I don't like much"? Juan Cole is wondering too:

This cover story makes no sense, and it seems more likely that al-Maliki is continuing to clean house and is purging Interior of people placed there by previous governments or by the US CIA and Department of Defense. The Interior Ministry was set up by Naqib al-Falah, an ex-Baathist Sunni whose father had been a Baathist general who defected in the 1970s.

....When the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance won the 2005 elections, PM Ibrahim Jaafari gave interior to Bayan Jabr, a Turkmen member of the pro-Iran Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Jabr reconfigured the special police commandos as a hard line Shiite unit. But neither Jaafari nor al-Maliki has had complete control of the bureaucracy, and many of Falah's ex-Baathists, whether Sunni or Shiite, managed to hold on to their jobs. Until now. Anyway, that is my guess.

Otherwise, it is not plausible at this late date that 28 people in Interior could make a neo-Baath coup.

Agreed. If this was a coup attempt, it was a pretty half-assed effort.